Was US Iran Mission Successful?
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This is CNN Breaking News.

Good morning and welcome to CNN This Morning's breaking news coverage of the situation in the Middle East. I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me. We're going to talk about the aftermath of the U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. A big question remains: Did they accomplish the goal of dismantling Iran's nuclear program?

Before and after satellite images at the three sites hit by American bombs show craters and burnt out buildings, like you're seeing here at the nuclear facilities in Isfahan, which has been heavily damaged according to a new assessment. In the mountain fortress of Fordow, a handful of craters marked the spot where the U.S. bunker busters hit facilities buried hundreds of feet underground. Now, this was the first time these massive bombs have been used in combat.

President Trump and his allies declaring they've achieved the goal of destroying Iran's nuclear weapons program. They're now warning Iran not to attack U.S. forces. If they leave American troops out of it and they decide to give up their nuclear weapons program once and for all, then I think the president has been very clear we can have a good relationship with the Iranians. We can have a peaceful situation in that region of the world.

But Iran is now telling the UN that they have the right to respond to the U.S. strikes. The timing, nature and the scale of Iran's proportionate response will be decided by its armed forces. Joining me now to discuss, CNN chief international security correspondent Nick Paton Walsh. Good morning. Nick, I want to start by talking about just the state of Iran's nuclear program after these attacks. What is known so far?

Honestly, I think we know from some of those satellite images that clearly has been damaged to the sites which were considered the most impregnable, like Fordow, buried deep in the mountains there. Indeed, the UN nuclear watchdog today said that given the explosive payload utilised and the extreme vibration sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred. That's the director general of the IAEA.

Now, we know that 12 of these bunker buster bombs only possessed by the United States were dropped by these six B-2 bombers during this particular mission.

But ultimately, the question here, Audi, is not so much the damage that we have seen done to the public sites. That is quantifiable. Those are places which potentially were involved in the full extent of Iran's nuclear program. It's perhaps the things that we have not been talking about over the past days that will be causing America and Israeli intelligence agencies the largest amounts of concern here.

What are the things that they did not know about? What elements to the nuclear program were moved ahead of these long telegraphed strikes? Remember, we didn't know the U.S. was going to do this, but they floated the possibility for days, possibly even years. Would you, if you were Iran, store your most secretive elements within places that were publicly at times accessed by U.N. inspectors? Unclear. And so Israel, and something of a bind here, it's maintained that this is a secretive

weapons program that was racing ahead towards a nuclear weapon while at the same time to that affords the possibility that there are elements this program simply the Israel was unaware about and may now be involved in Iran's next steps if indeed Iran retains or even had they deny a nuclear weapon ambitions already it also sounds like that has implications for any argument about whether there is a need for follow-up strikes

Yeah, I mean, we're hearing this morning from Iranian state media that indeed, Fardaw has been hit again. Now, if that is indeed the case, that could be a sign that whoever is behind these strikes, potentially Israel or indeed the United States, sees the possibility for a need for further damage to be done or that the damage currently done can indeed be compounded to potentially collapse structures inside there.

You just have to ask yourself more broadly, Aldi, if you were the Iranians and you had the secret ambition, would you be sure that you left everything that pertained to that in places that were on publicly available lists? So that's a question that's going to be very desperately sought an answer to over the coming days, Aldi. That's CNN chief international security correspondent Nick Payton Walsh. Thank you.

And new this morning, a CNN crew in Iran witnessing a major aerial bombing. This is new video showing heavy black smoke over the northwestern part of the city. Now, our crew says they heard several jets pass overhead before a series of explosions. Israel's defense ministry says the country's air force targeted the heart of Tehran with the strikes. Now, they did claim to target airports and missile storage facilities earlier this morning. At least 15 fighter jets and helicopters were destroyed.

There is no doubt this is a regime that wants to destroy us, wants to eliminate our very existence. That's why we launched this operation, to remove the two concrete threats to our existence, the nuclear threat and the threat of ballistic missiles. We are progressing step by step towards achieving these goals. We are very, very close to completing them.

Israel says their air defenses are working to shoot down a number of missiles launched from Iran. Just hours ago, Israeli officials briefly ordered people to enter shelters after a wave of strikes. We've got CNN International diplomatic editor Nick Robertson joining me now from Israel. Nick, can you help me understand as these strikes progress what you're seeing on the ground in Israel?

Yeah, I think what we're seeing, Audi, well, it's rather what we are seeing is a change in tactics by both Israel and Iran. Iran, rather than sending large barrages of missiles where the strike is over quickly, today have sent smaller barrages, five to ten missiles total in four waves,

which have kept Israelis from the north to the center to the south of the country in these separate waves, kept them in their underground shelters for longer. It's disruptive. Flights that were inbound here were turned around. We've also heard from the electricity company in Israel saying that a strategic facility, an impact near there has led to electricity being cut off to some communities. It appears that

Iran is, rather than using a lot of missiles, is using a few to be as disruptive to people's lives during the day having these strikes as well as in the middle of the night, extended periods. And from the Israeli side on Iran, again, as you were mentioning there, officials here in Israel saying that they're striking military targets. But we've just heard the defense minister say

in Israel. Israel caps laying out what they're doing and is calling it right now the IDF is using unprecedented force in Tehran and our own Fred Plakelin has been witness to some of that. But what is really interesting and speaks to the change of tactics is what

Israel's defense minister said that they have targeted Evin prison, which is the feared, most feared prison in Iran, where the high value political prisoners, the foreign prisoners are held. So we've seen images that appear to show the doors being blown off of that jail. Also, the defense minister here in Israel saying that they have targeted the besieged forces, the headquarters of the besieged forces

inside of Tehran. This is a volunteer paramilitary force that is feared on the streets of Tehran. They're the people that come out and put down the popular anti-regime protests.

This hints, and the defense minister didn't say it, but when you hit the prison, you hit these paramilitary forces. This is not massive strategic military facilities or nuclear facilities you're hitting. You are hitting elements that can contribute towards the potential for regime change. And that's why I say that we are seeing this shift in tactics from both sides. Nick Robertson, CNN International diplomatic editor.

Now, our breaking news coverage of these U.S. strikes in Iran continues next. President Trump had said he was giving diplomacy a shot. So how did two weeks turn into two days? Was that all part of the plan? Plus, what's Iran's next move? And is there still a path to peace? I don't know why the U.S. should drag themselves in the war between two other countries and spend the taxpayers' money over there.

After giving Iran a two-week deadline to come to the table, President Trump struck its nuclear facilities just two days after. Sources say he gave that timeline to throw Iran off his scent. Last week, the White House painted a picture that the president hadn't come to a decision yet. Come Saturday, those around Trump believed he'd made up his mind for days. Now he's signaling this may not be the end of the plan. Remember, there are many targets left.

Tonight's was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed, and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.

Joining me now, Stephen Collinson, CNN Politics and senior reporter. Sabrina Singh, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary under President Biden. And Joel Rubin, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Obama Administration. Joel, I want to start with you because last week when we were talking about this window of time for diplomacy, you said, well, is it clear that they want diplomacy or is this a cover for something else? So how are you feeling reading this news over the weekend?

Well, it's quite a moment when I realized that my inner Donald Trump prediction meter is working because, you know, I think right now we are in a moment of uncertainty and a new precipice. President Trump is changing his message every day. He's now talking about regime change.

And, you know, one of the things I'm watching just even in the reporting that you had a moment ago is that the Israelis seem to have taken that signal. And now maybe they're trying to find a way to get a jailbreak, a way to stir up the passions inside of Tehran against the regime. He did this.

when he talked about Gaza and Riviera, and then the Israelis, the IDF, decided to go for it in much of its actions in Gaza. And so I think we're going to see the president continue to push forward rather than look backward, because we don't quite know, just close with this, we don't quite know what the bombing damage assessment is. Exactly. We're going to be talking about that in the show today. So he'll go forward. It was interesting, you were saying that this is like the capstone military strike of the post-October 7th era. And Sabrina, you were pointing out 25-minute operatives

for 75 strikes. So it was designed for impact. Unfortunately, we don't know what that impact is. What are you looking for going forward? It was an incredibly complex operation. I mean, you cannot deny the professionalism of our military when it came to this operation. I think there's a lot to be determined and the battle damage assessment is ongoing on how effective these strikes were. Essentially, what's going to happen over the next few days is we're

different intelligence agencies across the administration are going to be looking for chatter to see what people are talking about, how damaged things are. And then of course there's the human sources, either on the ground or all around the world, that they'll be getting collection from. I think it's still too early to tell, but to say that some of these facilities have been severely damaged, I think that is accurate and that's what you heard from the chairman yesterday.

Stephen, you were writing about this being a gamble for this president, right? That if he kind of failed to destroy the program, to the extent he's talking about, there are other kinds of ramifications to deal with. Can you talk about that gamble? What else do you think is on the table? Yeah, I think there's a couple of really interesting unknowns here. The first one is,

did the Iranians move some of this material out of these facilities? Do they have some covert facilities that are not known to the International Atomic Energy Agency? Could they therefore push towards some kind of rudimentary device, reasoning that this is the only way that they save the regime? And I don't think it's clear from talking to people that know about this that we don't know and we may never know, and there's always going to be this uncertainty, even though this raid

And the Israeli operation was to try and create certainty and to lift the threat, an existential threat, from Israel. The other thing is, getting into the president's comments about regime change, another gamble is, what is he unleashing here?

It's unlikely, given the political situation in Iran, that it's suddenly going to produce some kind of pro-Western, democratic, pro-Israel government. You could end up with a hardline government coming out of the guard if the clerical regime is toppled or weakened. So history shows us we don't need any new examples of how assumptions and shock and awe beginnings of American wars in the Middle East

can unravel over time. All right, I want you guys to stay with me because we're going to talk about a couple angles of this today. CNN's ongoing breaking news coverage out of the Middle East continues. We're going to talk about the potential for Iranian retaliation, the dire warning about the threat of sleeper cells in the U.S., plus how successful was the U.S.'s attempt to knock out Iran's nuclear program after all.

We're monitoring breaking developments out of Iran after the U.S. hit three major nuclear sites. And the question now, how will Iran respond? One concern could be sleeper cells inside the U.S. Here's former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It's a real concern. I'm confident that President Trump took this into consideration as one of the risks when he decided to be so decisive to get Iran away from its nuclear program in the deep way that he did.

Joining me now to discuss Juliette Kayyem, former Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Juliette, first let's just start with this sleeper cell concept. What do you know?

There's always been a concern about Hezbollah-backed, Iranian-backed, Hezbollah sleeper cells in the United States. But Hezbollah has never had a successful attack here in the United States. And I think it's a concern, sort of background noise, so to speak, and evergreen. But I think it's probably the least likely because Iran also knows that the impact of launching a terror attack in the United States would have grave consequences for them.

You also have the Department of Homeland Security issuing a warning of, quote, possible low-level cyber attacks and lone wolf attacks. Can you talk about the potential threat there? I mean, we're also hearing that Iran, like, has intermittent internet, right? So what are the concerns?

Yeah, so I think that's probably the greater likelihood. If you're looking at Iran's potential to impact the homeland, because obviously they're going to have a lot greater strength doing something against our bases or abroad, it is going to be either an asymmetric attack like cyber attacks

attacks which have happened in the past. They are sophisticated, probably one of the top four adversary nations that could do something, but as you noted, even their capacity is degraded. The worrisome aspect

of any military conflict, any conflict is also just radicalization of what we would traditionally call the lone wolf, someone who has allegiances to Iran, doesn't like what the United States did, and then becomes radicalized. We also worry about hate crimes against Iranian populations. It's that individual radicalization that's very hard to monitor and very hard to stop.

We are also looking at a Department of Homeland Security that has eviscerated both its cybersecurity capacity and protections as well as its counterterrorism. It is a department that has been focused on immigration. They don't hide it. It's the way that it's the it's the philosophy of the department now. So it's going to have to nurture those elements again that have been neglected.

neglected for the last couple months because of the focus on ICE raids. - Julie, can I follow up on this idea for one second? So you're talking about the potential to pivot. Are you saying that cuts to staff across the board are concerns or is it the actual agenda and focus of the head of the department?

It's both. So the department was created, as people remember, after September 11th. It had a singular focus, counterterrorism. Twenty years go by and it achieved what we call an all hazards focus. Border, cyber, climate change, all of the challenges that the homeland faces. You then have a pivot with the new administration where Congress

because of the doge cuts, because of a focus in terms of priorities, it begins to move money, resources and personnel towards ICE enforcement. The cyber, the CSEDs called the Cyber Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as this counterterrorism capabilities are understaffed. And I will be honest with you, are often staffed with people who don't have a background in this. So when you have an agency that that's singularly focused,

you are going to miss other threats. And so Secretary Noem of the Department of Homeland Security has been tweeting out about that focus. But when you actually drill down in terms of the budget, in terms of the people, and in terms of the quality of the people, you're going to have a challenge in these

other threats that we know still exist against the homeland and that are increased because of the actions on Friday. I don't know what their plan is, and they should probably be transparent about it. But the ICE raids have had an impact not just to the outside world, but internally at the department that that we are now noting because we are looking at at other potential threats.

That's Juliette Kayyem. She was a former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Thank you. Thank you. And we're continuing this breaking news coverage out of the Middle East. President Trump now floating the idea of regime change, why people in Iran say Trump's plans are bringing them together, plus how the U.S. pulled off Operation Midnight Hammer in a surprise attack.

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This is CNN Breaking News.

This is CNN This Morning with breaking news coverage of the situation in the Middle East. Good morning, everybody. I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me. So we want to talk about this. How did the U.S. pull off Operation Midnight Hammer with a fakeout and more than 125 aircrafts? B-2 bombers carrying 30,000 pounds of never-before-used bomb launched overnight Friday, headed towards Iranian nuclear sites. Some also headed west in an attempt at misdirection.

As the aircrafts neared the target, a U.S. submarine shot more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles at one of the nuclear sites. Officials went to great lengths to conceal the op after months of planning. It's still unclear how much damage Iran sustained.

I think BDA is still pending and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there. The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.

This morning, Iranian media is reporting that the Fordow nuclear site has been hit again. Joining me now, CNN military analyst and retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Layton. Good morning. Thank you for being here. Good morning, Adi. We heard them use the term BDA, Battle Damage Assessment. Can you talk about what makes it difficult to assess in this moment? So because of the type of target that we have here, let's take the Fordow site as a prime example of this. We have what's called a

hardened and deeply buried target. So this is a target that was built with specialized concrete, a concrete that has a type of strength that you don't normally see in regular construction. And then you also have the fact that it's buried deeply underground. So we're talking almost 300 feet below ground.

very hard to get in there. What we do know when you look at the pictures of Fordow is you can basically see impact points where the GBU-57s, which are the bunker buster, massive-- - And over the weekend people might have seen some of the images, you see kind of a gray, like maybe there's dust. But are we reliant on that kind of imagery when you can't get there physically? - So that can be a problem actually because traditionally BDA has been done using imagery

with some of the other intelligence disciplines like signals intelligence being kind of in a supporting role. In this particular case, we need basically everything in order to get at least the hope of an accurate assessment. So imagery will be primary, but you also need imagery from underground if we can get it. So that would mean

potentially using human assets to go down there, take the pictures and extract those pictures and bring them out so that they can be assessed at the Pentagon and of course in Israel. So those are the kinds of things that would have to happen. You have to have multi-source intelligence that would also include human intelligence. As the Iranians talk about this among themselves, there might be somebody who will

overhear something and reported to the Israelis in particular because they have an extensive human intelligence network within Iran. That would probably be one of the ways that we would be able to get BDA out of this. The problem is that it may take a long time to get accurate BDA just because of the nature of the target and the

the difficulty of penetrating some of the aspects of Iranian society. And we're not just sort of generally obsessed with the nomenclature here. I mean, this has direct implications for whether you have to go back and whether this is a mission accomplished moment, as we understand historically. Did you actually accomplish what you set out to do? And if you didn't,

what action do you have to take to get there yes that's that's actually a really good question because we have a a series of situations it let's see it looks like you struck everything that you were supposed to striking on the initial assessments that the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs made are accurate list let's say that they're completely accurate and we actually struck everything it's still possible that the ultimate goals were not achieved ultimate goal in this case

being the actual destruction or at least the neutralization of Iran's nuclear weapons program. If that is the goal and it continues to be the goal, then you want to assess not only what the damage was at a place like Fordow or at the other two sites, but you also want to take a look and see what are the Iranians doing in other places. So even places that were not struck,

the activity at those places has to be observed in order to fully assess whether or not we're at the point that we want to be where we can say, "Okay, they've stopped their program or they're at least doing workarounds and the program has been delayed by X number of years or months."

Colonel Layton, thank you a lot to look out for there. Appreciate your time. You bet. We want to turn now to protesters who have taken to the streets of Tehran. Some of them say their anger with the U.S. is bringing them together. CNN's Fred Pleikin brings us this report from the streets of Iran.

There still is a lot of public anger unloading here on the streets of Tehran. Thousands of people have come here to Revolution Square, first and foremost to criticize US President Trump and to vow revenge for the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. One of the interesting things that we're seeing on the ground now here is that

Even if missiles rain down on my head, I will stay here, she says, and I will sacrifice my life and my blood for my country.

This member of parliament says a lot of those standing here chanting slogans against the United States may have been critics of the policies of the Islamic Republic. But today, all of us are standing in one line behind the supreme leader.

People now chanting "Death to America" here at Revolution Square. And you can really feel how angry a lot of them are towards President Trump. Of course, the Iranian government has said that it reserves the right to retaliate for those strikes.

on the nuclear facilities, saying that it is their right to have nuclear enrichment, it is their right to have a nuclear program, and it's not something that they're going to allow the Trump administration to take away from them. And that is certainly also the sentiment that we're seeing here on the streets of Tehran. Like in Siyanet, Tehran. So as anger boils over for anti-American protesters in Iran, President Trump is calling for calm or else.

Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier. But the president's message for peace seems to be falling on deaf ears for Iranian leaders who are promising everlasting consequences. In accordance with the UN Charter and its provisions allowing a legitimate response in self-defense,

Iran reserves all options to defend its security interests and people.

OK, my panel is back with me. And Stephen, you were writing over the weekend that you can't necessarily, maybe Trump is trying to bomb Iran to the negotiating table, essentially just making it that they're in a surrender capacity. Right. That seemed to be the initial plan, at least from the rhetoric that we saw on Saturday night and what followed through. And this idea that the way is now open for Iran. Several of the senior administration officials on TV yesterday were saying,

We can have a partnership with Iran, which seems an extraordinary thing to say after you've just sent B-2 bombers halfway around the world to bomb the country. It seems like this is a long shot because the Iranian revolution, the regime for the last 46 years, its core principle in many ways has been opposition to the United States. There's a deep-set feeling that the United States is a colonial power throughout modern Iranian history.

That said, a lot of the options that Iran has to respond to the United States, they all come with a downside, whether it's bombing U.S. bases in the region, which would precipitate a big response, and even that regime change option from the U.S. and Israel. But also, you know, action elsewhere in the region. There are a lot of Iranian diaspora in the Gulf states, for example. There's lots of financial problems with closing down the Straits of Hormuz.

It doesn't look like the Iranians have a lot of good options to respond that don't intensify this. Joel, I want to play for you something from a House lawmaker, someone on the House Intel Committee, a ranking Democrat, Jim Hines, because here we're talking about the idea of coming back to the table. Meanwhile, over in Congress, you're starting to hear rumblings of, hey, wait a minute, should we be involved in this? What's the intelligence? People asking questions. Here's what he had to say.

I learned about this strike last night on Twitter. As a member of the Gang of Eight, you might think that for something this consequential, we would be informed of any change in intelligence. And by the way, I mean, let's not lose sight of the fact that an offensive attack against a foreign nation is something that the Constitution reserves to the Congress of the United States. So bad enough that we weren't informed, but, you know, unconstitutional.

I realize this is kind of for both of you because I can't imagine a White House wanting their surprise attack being told to Congress first. But Joel, let me start with you. What did you hear in that? Yeah, you know, what I heard right there was Congressman Hines saying this is a major process foul.

that you need to get the process right if you're going to have an ongoing commitment of American military power in the region towards Iran. And the administration is already starting in the wrong way. That said, I think there is space within the War Powers Resolution and the Act, a statute for the president to have taken the strikes that he did. But now,

Now we're in the debate phase on the Hill. Carson Himes, my understanding is he's going to join with Adam Smith and Greg Meeks, the leaders of national security committees in the House for Democrats, to try to push forward legislation. And you shouldn't have process fouls in times of war. It should be bipartisan from the get-go.

But the question has always been, when are we officially at war? When we look back at presidents who have used authorizations for the use of military force, it's going all the way back to George W. Bush. How do you think about this, Sabrina? I think there's clearly room within the War Powers Act that allows presidents to take advantage of acting unilaterally in the interests of America.

For limited strikes and things like that. For limited strikes. And you saw that when we were conducting strikes in the Biden administration against the Houthis. But this goes back, whether it be Bosnia under President Clinton, Libya under President Obama. Should Congress be consulted? Absolutely. Congress plays a role. And these are representatives who represent Americans.

I think what was concerning, what I heard from Democratic lawmakers, is that they didn't get the same briefing that their Republican counterparts, Senator Thune, Mike Johnson, they were just told strikes are happening. And that, to me, is really concerning because even though these are Democratic members, they still represent all Americans in their districts, including Republicans, Democrats, Independents. They deserve to have those full briefings as well. Interesting. You guys stay with me. We've got more to talk about.

Next, in this breaking news coverage of the U.S. strikes in Iran, the U.S. claims to have done monumental damage to Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. Iran says they moved their supplies last week. So what is the status of the nuclear program this morning? Plus, President Trump's new pitch, Make Iran Great Again, is regime change in the cards.

Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated. Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.

You heard it there. The top Trump administration officials appear convinced they have obliterated Iran's nuclear program with a daring B-2 bombing mission over the weekend. CNN analysis of before and after satellite images show significant damage across several Iranian nuclear sites, but is it enough to end Iran's nuclear ambitions for good?

I think all three facilities are probably smoking rubble right now, but the Iranians are not dumb people, right? There's some chance that, you know, given that this raid was telegraphed for a couple of days, that they might have thrown a couple hundred kilograms of 60% enriched uranium into the back of a truck and moved it somewhere else. And the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency also seems concerned that Iran was able to guard part of its stockpile of nuclear materials.

Iran has made no secret that they have protected this material. We need to ensure that we are not moving towards a situation where the unthinkable would happen, this being Iran going towards a nuclear weapon.

My next guest writes this in his latest piece for the New Republic, quote, "Only a fool would expect anything good to come out of this unnecessary, illegal, extraordinarily dangerous bombing campaign." And he adds, "This is not the end of Trump's war. It's only the first act."

national security expert joe syrencione joins me now thank you for being here my pleasure uh... so it's out here very much going against this idea of quote unquote kind of a mission accomplished moment here 'cause we had trump get up and say obliterated done that this has been effective

And over time we're hearing, is it the ambitions that are done or the physical damage? What are you listening for? Right. Once again, we're hanging the victory banner way too early. War is not a one-act play. This is the beginning of a very long campaign. Iran is a very large, rich country.

populated country, the nuclear facilities are sprawling, protected, deeply buried. There are other sites that we know Iran has constructed that we did not touch. Rafael Mariana Grossi is exactly right

The Iranians, we now know, did move their stockpile of 60% of rich uranium out of those sites. We have satellite imagery of trucks pulling up to the sites right before the bombing campaign began. So yes, we should be deeply concerned that not only did these strikes not destroy the facilities, which is clear they did not,

But they didn't get the most important part, that bomb material that Iran could be spinning even now up to weapons grade uranium for the core of a bomb. But to raise a different idea here, you have this leader of Iran, 86 years old, in a bunker somewhere. Most of his people sitting around the table have been assassinated. You have a lot of these sites, at least under some amount of rubble. Why shouldn't the administration feel like they have at the very least

really set back Iran's nuclear ambitions? You have to keep this in perspective. The damage that was done by these bombing strikes, both the Israeli and the U.S. bunker busters on Firdo destroyed less equipment than the Iran nuclear deal did.

diplomacy eliminated many more thousands of centrifuges than this bombing campaign. It got almost all of the enriched uranium out of the country. This bombing campaign hit some of it. Has the Ayatollah lost some of his leaders? Absolutely. But it is a very big military and intelligence operation. They can be replaced.

To my view, what you have here is a situation where you have a war going on led by Trump, Netanyahu, and the Ayatollah, three unstable, unpopular, unpredictable leaders. Anything could happen here.

very premature to believe that we've solved this war or that we've won this war or we delivered a fatal blow. That's the classic military mistake, the fallacy of the last move, to believe that you're bold,

even militarily superior move is going to settle the conflict in your favor. No, the enemy gets a vote. Now we're waiting for the Iranian regime to cast its vote. That's a lot of questions you have raised, Joe. Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate your time. Thanks. Back now to Tehran, where our CNN crews on the ground witnessed a major airstrike on the city. Our Fred Plankin was there and sent in this just a short time ago. So we've just witnessed...

a massive airstrike here on the area of sort of northern central Tehran. We actually went downstairs into a shelter once we heard planes overhead and then we heard explosions. You can see now the sky

over the northwest of Tehran is completely filled with smokes. It seemed to us as though it were several really, really strong impacts that took place. And if we look over to the left here, you can see the smoke seems to be emanating from that area. That's more towards the west of Iran, the sort of northwest of Tehran, of the Iranian capital.

This is the first time since we've been here that we've seen a heavy airstrike like this in the fairly central part of the city. So we're only going to be able to be up here for not much longer. But this is definitely something that I wouldn't say is unprecedented, but it's definitely something that we haven't seen in the past couple of days. Coming, of course, exactly after the Trump administration

struck those nuclear facilities and the Iranians are vowing revenge for that. Of course the Israelis also continuing their air campaign and right now as you can see the skies over Tehran filled with thick black smoke. Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Tehran.

Okay, so we are starting this week in this major moment, right? You saw strikes there that Fred was just reporting on. And in the meantime, in the U.S., a conversation about regime change. President Trump is now floating the idea of that. He posted on social media, quote, it's not politically correct to use the term regime change, but if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be regime change?

And for some Iranians, that might not be such a bad idea. I'm actually thankful about that to President Trump. But at the same time, we Iranian people inside of here, inside in the states and outside, we were expecting a regime change. We were expecting the United States and Israel help us to get rid of this dictator regime.

Joining me now, my panel, I wanted to talk about this because lawmakers will be back this week. We will hear these rumblings of concerns here and there. And I want to play one more thing for you, which is what we are hearing from the administration when they are asked about, you know, Trump saying it's a kind of politically charged term. But here's what they said when they were asked about regime change.

So isn't a regime change move? Our view has been very clear that we don't want a regime change. We do not want to protract this or build this out any more than it's already been built out. I'm not shocked that J.D. Vance is delivering that message, Steve and you. Right. I think the question is, I think a lot of people in the administration would like a regime change. The question is whether they're going to push for a regime change.

The issue here is these events do tend to gather their own momentum. We went from a week ago, just over a week ago, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, saying we had nothing to do with this, to U.S. bombing. And now within eight days, nine days, the word regime change is again on the lips of many people in Washington.

The whole U.S. showdown started with Iran, with regime change. Back in 1953, the CIA-British coup to overthrow the prime minister, Mossadegh.

The lesson, and I'm going to keep going back to lessons of history because things don't always work out the same way, but regime change plotted in Washington have a pretty bad record of working out well for the United States. But they start with those military moments, right? And those successes of saying, as we heard our guests earlier, that, okay, there's a bold move and therefore we can follow it up. Is it fair, though, as Americans hear the term regime change and think boots on the ground? Is that...

Are those just linked or are they actually linked militarily? I don't think that a regime change necessarily means boots on the ground. I don't know. Yeah, here's Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeting about this weekend saying, American troops have been killed and forever torn apart physically and mentally for regime change. You know, I don't in this day and age with the type of regime

capabilities that we have. I don't know that that means boots on the ground, and I don't know that this administration is there in committing boots on the ground for a, quote, potential regime change. But I think what's important here is what we don't know. We have not had a diplomatic presence in Iran for some 20 years. So we don't even know what the inner workings of a diplomatic regime change could even look like. That is really for the Iranian people to chart their course on.

If we expedite that in some way, if the Israelis expedite that in some way, again, we have a lot of unknowns. And right now, I don't know that this administration wants to pull Americans into a larger war. Yeah. Joel, how are you seeing this debate play out, especially on the right? Sure. Well, you know, Adi, the administration needs to decide if it wants regime change or to change the regime's behavior. That's the core decision. And President Trump is sort of throwing out a lot of different ideas, making a mess of it.

It's a toxic term to the American public across the board. I served in the Bush administration when we invaded Iraq. Regime change came, and it became this magnet Iraq did where it just sucked us in. And so I think the United States, we need to be very careful that the goal here was the nuclear program. Stick to that. We need to supercharge our diplomacy. The president's coming with NATO. Yeah, but isn't it hard to stick to that, right? It is extremely hard to stick to that.

the language bleeding back and forth, right? Like first it's the nuclear facility, then it's the ambition, then it's the capability. And those seem vaguer or more hard to quantify. - Perceived success accelerates that thought. But six weeks ago in Saudi Arabia, the president said, "Where's the effect of the people that pushed interventionism over the last 20 years were interfering in societies they didn't understand."

That seems to be the point where we may be crossing over to. Yeah, and though we are very far away from that point, if he is now saying make Iran great again, but literally inserting this idea into the very core of his sort of public persona. Which will only mobilize the Iranian people behind the Iranian regime because they don't want to have a foreign intervention overthrow the government, no matter how much they detest that government. Yes, although it's hard to tell because over the years they have suppressed oppression so effectively.

in Iran. So as you said, we don't know what could come after if there is an after. I want to thank you guys for bringing your expertise here with me this morning. I really appreciate it. And thank you for being with us. I'm Adi Cornish. We're going to have the headlines with CNN News Central right now.

Hi, I'm Omar Jimenez, correspondent for CNN, and we believe that to understand the world, you need the truth. It's why we follow the facts every day, wherever they may lead. Follow CNN and subscribe at cnn.com forward slash subscription.